DMVJDCPA is missing from this thread! Having started playing in 2008, his/her solve rate has always been 100% until this month!! Quite an astounding accomplishment!!!
Perhaps I got this wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's true. Wish that he/she would add a comment to this thread.

If I get far enough into a month to still have 100% rating, I will take much longer than normal to solve. It's nice to occasionally get that ribbon. OTOH, if we get far enough into the month and I'm like 14-16 on the fastest time, I won't do a 10 minute solve.

Silly me, just today I had a 20 minute solve even though I had already missed six puzzles. Actually. I had it solved in about 50 seconds and lost connection to the server. But I just had the urge to get the solve posted even though I severely hit my average time. Just checked the leaderboard and I'm still at 16th despite the 20 minute solve. I hope I can avoid that dreaded lost connection for a while.

Yes, the dreaded lost connection has hit me a few times this month. It's one reason I don't worry about trying for a fast time, although I don't think I'm capable of fast solving anyway. Right now I'm in first place for solve rate, but only because poor Gryhnd got cheated out of her 100% record. I will feel really lucky if I get through the rest of the month without the same thing happening to me!

I can't compete with the highest and fastest yet but I have 3 100% trophies and now I'm addicted to being a 100%'er. I was devastated when I found one this month I could not solve. I just spent 5 days on the quote from Michel de Montaigne that Annamariah mentioned in this thread. MS updated and rebooted my computer overnight and I lost the ability to retry it or I would probably still be trying to solve it.

I'm not sure why it was so hard but now that I see the answer I feel even worse. The only consolation is that Annamariah had problems with it also.

When I've played, I've stayed at 100% except the first month the site was back, when I was fighting for a speed trophy (my #3 and the only time I've really done well on speed). There was one other time when the site was down for longer than it saved the puzzles for retry, and I missed one that month.

I do them as fast as I can and still stay at 100%. I do have my own little cheats though. When I hit a really difficult puzzle, I save it to an Excel file by author and how many letters in each of the first five words. If I get stuck, I check my file to see if it gave me problems before.

I also have a key word list in MS Word, organized by pattern - it has 108,000 words in it and helps at times too.

One thing to remember, Tilottama, is that no matter how long a quote is, you never have to type more than 26 characters to solve it - usually a lot less, because very few quotes use all the letters of the alphabet. It's more a matter of how quickly you can either recognize the quote or see some familiar word patterns.

I think there should be another category for the competition, because people like you who can solve so quickly AND get 100% solve rates are a cut above the rest of us! It should combine percentage solved with speed.

I think there should be another category for the competition, because people like you who can solve so quickly AND get 100% solve rates are a cut above the rest of us! It should combine percentage solved with speed.

Debzhaus, I've been thinking that for years.

Quote:

I quickly figured out it would always bother me if I didn't solve every puzzle I started. When I first found the site I wasn't very fast at all, so having a high percentage was the only way I could get in the top 20 every month and get that little trophy. Sometimes I'll find a puzzle hours later that must have been a double-load... I'm compelled to solve it even if it totally wrecks my time for the month. It's particularly galling if it's a stupid quote, but I solve it anyway.

Same here, Carpe, exactly the same. Yesterday I found a quote that should have been solved hours before -- turns out I missed one letter -- solved it, and my average time went up to 89.1 seconds. Woo hoo! That happened a day or two after the Shakespeare quotation that had to marinate overnight.

Distraction often does the trick -- any distraction. Come back, and there's the answer.

I am a perfectionist, always have been, and like to learn new skills. Trophy or no, the more cryptograms solved, the more you figure out various solving heuristics -- although I do lack maradnu's focus and self-discipline: I have no Excel file sorted by author, no key word list organized by pattern.

Solving 100% also means you get to read more bios and -- the best part -- lots more crypto comments, which often surpass the original quotation in intelligence, wit, depth and sheer audacity.